


the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us

by whatitis



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Carlos is a Good Boyfriend, M/M, Slow Burn, guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7771171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatitis/pseuds/whatitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm serious."</p>
<p>"Hi, serious, my name is Carlos."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us

In the quiet of the evenings, the sun striking purple and orange on the desert clouds, a silence fell over Night Vale like the shroud that covered City Hall at night. Especially in summer, when the air was still and hot and felt ripe for adventure: dusk was a magical time, to sound rather cliché. And, well, if anything, Cecil Gershwin Palmer was not opposed to sounding cliché. Anything he said sounded inherently natural and easy, even if it was sappy or overused, because Cecil had a good voice that made everything sound beautiful. So, if he were to say that the darkening afternoon felt like a journey waiting to happen, nobody would strictly oppose that. Summer evenings were magical for another reason, though.

These were the nights that he met Carlos.

Their spot was the same each time: a single, towering Joshua tree that marked the near edge of the scrublands, offering little shade in the daytime sun, but sturdy enough to sit in when it cooled off at night. Nobody ever really went there except them, so it felt even more special because of that, like they were the only ones who really knew how cool it was. And it was that--cool. If one climbed closer to the top of it, they would have a fairly good view of Night Vale, if they looked towards the south, or the desert, if they looked towards the north. The view was something spectacular, especially to a couple of high school students who hadn’t ever seen anything better.

When Cecil went to the tree on a breezy June evening, Carlos was already there, sprawled on a wide branch twelve feet off the ground, a lit cigarette dangling from one hand and a science textbook clutched in the other. They had met their freshman year: Cecil, a Night Vale native with a collection of Boy Scout awards and a good voice, and Carlos, a soft-spoken kid who claimed to be from somewhere called “Florida”, which sounded a bit fake to Cecil. This didn’t bother him, though, as Carlos was beautiful and perfect. Carlos did not share this opinion of himself, but Cecil told him this daily. They weren’t dating, but these meetings were something damn close, and it all felt good to Cecil.

“Hey,” Carlos said, as Cecil started the difficult climb up the tree, “can you help me--”

“Oh my _god,_ Carlos. You’re not going to believe this one,” the other boy exclaimed, wriggling up onto a nearby branch. While he was always excited about something or other, he seemed _especially_ excited now, like the emotion was going to physically make him explode. Carlos raised an eyebrow, more amused than annoyed at the interruption.

“Yeah, you’re right. I probably won’t believe it.”

“I got that internship with Leonard Burton,” Cecil said, forcing his voice to be level with minimal success. “ _Leonard Burton,_ Carlos. Do you know how cool this is?”

“No, I d-don’t. Who’s that?” 

Cecil sighed in a way that suggested exasperation, but he could never really be annoyed with Carlos, even when he didn’t understand local cultureor talked too loud or didn’t understand the finer points of community radio. These were all Carlos things, unique to him in their connected existence, so he could tolerate them easily.

“Leonard Burton, he does Night Vale Community Radio. He does the news, and the weather, and, um, other things. Like traffic.”

“Good for you, but I only listen to scientific news,” Carlos explained, smiling in a way that made it very difficult to detect whether or not he was joking. 

“Would you listen to the radio if I was reading the news, though? ‘Cause if I do good in this internship, Mr. Burton might let me do stuff for the show, right?”

“That...would be pretty neat, actually! I mean, I get to listen to you talk all the time, but I wonder if you’d sound different on the radio. Maybe your voice would get deeper?” Clearing his throat, Carlos put on a comically deep voice, barely able to keep himself from laughing. “‘Hi, my name is Cecil Gershwin, and here are the highlights from last night’s basketball--’” The voice collapsed into a bout of giggles as Carlos narrowly ducked a thrown eraser.

“I don’t sound _that_ silly.” Cecil pouted, reaching back into his pockets for something that hopefully wasn’t intended to be another projectile. “It does sound different, though, and it’s kinda weird? Like, it doesn’t seem like me at all.”

“Well, scientifically speaking, your voice sounds different than you think it sounds, ‘cause you hear it through the vibrations of your bones in your head, so it sounds deeper to you. So, it’d really be more like Mickey Mouse than anything else!”

“ _You_ sound like Mickey Mouse, Carlos.”

“I do not.”

“ _I do not,_ ” Cecil replied, driving his voice up half an octave. “It’s very squeaky. Very cute.”

“I’m gonna push you out of this tree if you don’t stop complimenting me, Gershwin.”

“Call me Mr. Palmer. That’s gonna be my new radio name,” Cecil drawled, pulling his precious tape recorder out of his pocket. Really, it seemed a little too bulky to fit in there in the first place, but Carlos had long forgone asking questions about the physics of Night Vale. “Can you imagine it? Mr. Palmer’s Show. It’s gonna be so cool.”

“Do you have to give yourself a special name, though? Isn’t it just community radio?”

“Nothing is ever _just_ community radio, Carlos.”

“...Well, then I’m sure you can think of a better name than Mr. Palmer.”

 

A week later, Cecil was there long before Carlos was, watching the path leading out to the edge of nowhere with a small telescope. Or, rather, not a _telescope,_ but something very much like one, because telescopes were outlawed by the Forbidden Technology laws. In his hands, he had a complicated mechanism of glass lenses encased in a metal tube, but it was definitely not a telescope. Carlos had made it for his shop final, and Cecil had treasured it since the other boy had semi-reluctantly given it to him as a Christmas present. It was only reluctant because Carlos was intending to throw it in the garbage, and not doing so felt awkward and weird, like missing a step on a staircase.

As Carlos approached the Joshua tree, he looked up at the not-telescope, and squinted. Cecil waved. Carlos did not wave back, simply opting to scale the tree without any fanfare, and before he even reached where Cecil was, his friend was talking animatedly. 

“So, today was my first day with Leonard--Mr. Burton--and oh my _gosh,_ it was so fun! It really felt like I was a radio professional!” he blurted out, swinging his legs back and forth off the side of the branch. Carlos haphazardly pulled himself up to sit beside Cecil, eyebrows raised. The distance between them was small, and it felt even smaller in the oppressive heat of the desert, like they were being pressed in. Carlos ignored this. Cecil did not, edging himself even closer to talk.

“What happened to his last intern, though?”

“Station Management got ‘em.”

“‘Got ‘em’?”

“Yeah, they didn’t bring Management their schedule plan on time and so they got subsumed, or something.” Cecil picked at his nails, seemingly unconcerned with the horrors he was describing. This did not go past Carlos quite as easily.

“Okay--Station Management _ate_ the last intern.”

“‘Ate’ is a strong word, Carlos.”

“Why can’t you just work at Arby’s, or something? Arby’s has a pretty low fatality rate, last I heard.”

“Future radio stars don’t work at _Arby’s._ ” Cecil frowned, looking up at Carlos. This would not usually be a problem, as Carlos was generally used to people frowning at him, but Cecil’s frown was so much more heartrending. He was aware this was a dramatic description for a teenage boy’s expression, but it really felt terrible to be under that kind of scrutiny. Cecil wasn’t a mean kid, but by God, he had a kind of strange authority that was very upsetting to disappoint. Carlos considered these things and smiled, leaning over to nudge Cecil’s shoulder.

“I’m glad you’ve survived this far, Cecil,” he said, just genuine enough to make Cecil feel warm and welcomed. He nudged Carlos back, grinning stupidly.

“It can’t be that dangerous, as long as I think on my feet and do what Mr. Burton tells me to do. He seems really nice, at least! I mean, he’s talking on the radio most of the time, but he did buy me a hat, so there’s something!”

“Why’d he buy you a hat?”

“The ceiling was leaking human saliva.”

 

Carlos didn’t play a very good guitar, but if he could only play Hot Cross Buns, it probably would’ve still knocked Cecil’s socks off.

As it was, he only knew a few basic chords and could string those chords together to approximate a few songs, though this was all very relative to what constituted “playing a very good guitar”. It had taken him a good while to haul the thing up, only managing to do so with a generous amount of help from Cecil, and playing it was perhaps even more awkward in conjunction with balancing on a branch, legs hanging off either side with his back sturdily positioned on the trunk. Cecil, ever doting, was on a branch above, looking down with equal parts excitement and worry.

“Do you know any Santana?”

“No,” Carlos said, gritting his teeth, “but I do know some Cash.”

“They have Cash in Flordia?”

“It’s pronounced Florida.”

“Yeah, but do they have any Santana? Abby has a guitar, and she can play a pretty mean Oye Como Va, though she never tunes it.”

“Stop backseat playing me, Gershwin.” Experimentally, Carlos strummed out a couple of chords, the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.

“Ooh, you’re _wa-ay_ out of tune.”

“Man, what’d I just say?” It was starting to get dark now, the sun dipping behind the ever-distant horizon to the tune of something that was decidedly not Johnny Cash or Santana--something more organic, or maybe just the sound of a kid trying to play an out-of-tune guitar without any sheet music or even a tuner. If one _really_ listened, it kind of sounded like Stand By Me by Ben E. King, but Cecil never really thought that far into things, and he was wholly unfamiliar with Mr. King’s discography. Carlos himself wasn’t strictly intending to play anything much, so what came was entirely-self indulgent and repetitive, a simple series of chord progressions and carefully picked notes. 

Cecil let his chin rest on his hands, taking the clumsy music in with equally clumsy ears. It was all the same to him: Abby’s inexpert playing for him when he was smaller, the weather, Carlos playing for him now...music strung his life together in a fashion that wasn’t quite linear, but it kept things connected, as opposed to a void with the occasional major event to define the passing of time. Carlos was objectively not very good, but to Cecil, it was audio perfection, simply because it contributed to the small bit of order in his life as it filtered up to him in the stillness of the night, accompanied by the whistling of a melody that likely didn’t exist.

“Hey, Carlos?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re pretty great.”

Carlos simply kept playing, the slightest of Mona Lisa half-smiles gracing his face. This was something Cecil took with great indignance, snaking a hand down to tap Carlos on the head.

“I’m serious.”

“Hi, serious, my name is Carlos.” This elicited another swat from Cecil, but he laughed nonetheless. Those stupid jokes always got him, and he knew that Carlos did them deliberately to screw with him, but it never once failed to make him laugh. Carlos’ smile widened the smallest of increments, and the music spread out into the darkening night.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“No, like I just said, my name is Carlos.”

“You--wait, uh, hold on.” Cecil fumbled through his pockets to pull out his tape recorder, clicking it on. “There we go.”

“Aw, c’mon, Cecil,” Carlos protested, though he did angle himself to the side facing the tape recorder, focusing on getting the notes right. “You seriously wanna record this.”

“I mean, of course! You’re very talented, Carlos.”

Carlos laughed, fingers working the metal strings with unpracticed care, but when Cecil shifted slightly from his perch, he could have sworn he saw something like a shadow flicker behind his shoulder.

 

It was late one night when Cecil finally made it to their meeting place, so late that Carlos himself appeared to be entirely asleep. In the very least, he was curled up in a crook of the tree, a wide Stetson covering his face. For a brief moment, Cecil considered simply leaving him be, but that would leave precious Carlos susceptible to coyotes, or perhaps even feral dogs, or maybe just falling out of the tree. So, it was with grim determination that he scaled the Joshua tree, trying to get to the same altitude as Carlos without waking him up. This, however, proved to be futile, as the second Cecil started the climb, Carlos was quietly awake and watching, a fact that the other boy wasn’t aware of until he was literally eye-to-eye with him, Carlos’ hat firmly back on his head.

“Cecil, you scared the crap out of me,” he accused, his usual concern multiplied tenfold in his voice. It was a bit too dark to see his face, but Cecil could swear up and down that he had the same vaguely worried expression that he usually did.

“Sorry, I was trying to be quiet--”

“No, I mean...listen, it’s gotta be past eleven, right?”

“Time doesn’t exist, Carlos.”

“Stop it with that. Where’ve you been?”

“Sorry, I was helping Abby move--she’s starting classes at NVCC in a week.” Sheepishly, Cecil ducked down to sit beside Carlos, who still seemed vaguely off-kilter, despite the aforementioned darkness casting his face into shadow. Cecil pondered this for a moment, before, as usual, voicing his thoughts for absolutely no reason. “It’s kinda dark, I can’t see your face.” 

To his credit, Carlos seemed to take it in stride, simply offering a soft laugh in response.

“I guess you’re right, huh. There aren’t any lightning bugs out here, I don’t think,” he mused, crossing his arms. Cecil couldn’t exactly see it, but he could perceive it through feeling Carlos move next to him and through memories of him doing the exact same thing every time he noticed something strange about Night Vale. It was cute, in the way that everything Carlos did was cute.

“Lightning bugs?”

“Fireflies. You know, they’re these little bugs that have blinking lights on their rears? You don’t really get ‘em more west than Kansas, I think, but they have some pretty spectacular bioluminescent abilities. You know.”

“Scientifically speaking,” they said in unison, one of them serious, one of them gently ribbing at the other, both of them laughing at the other with a genuine kind of happiness only able to be experienced late at night.

“God, Cecil,” Carlos gasped, catching his breath, “I could just kiss you.”

“...You could?”

“I mean, you--you know. That was funny. You said something that I liked, and that’s a thing you say when someone else says something that you like, right? I think so.”

“I could kiss you, too.”

Both of them let this thought percolate in the silence between them, darkness able to hide their faces but not their voices. Carlos felt for sure that his face was glowing in the darkness, regardless, and he wanted to say something to bring the conversation back, but he had never been excellent at talking, especially when it came to something as delicate as whatever this was. So, instead, he placed a hand on Cecil’s knee, giving it a gentle squeeze to indicate an idea that he couldn’t exactly bring to words. Surely Cecil could say something. Surely Cecil, the radio intern, the wordsmith genius, could break whatever spell this was on both of them, but he too remained silent.

Somehow, without really coordinating anything in particular, they both leaned into each other, quietly kissing in a way that neither of them had planned, creating something better than the sum of its parts. Immediately, the tension of a summer of Joshua trees and guitars and telescopes evaporated, leaving only them and who they were in that moment, the darkness filling the remaining space between them as to feel less alone. The brim of Carlos’ hat sat uncomfortably on Cecil’s forehead, and it was all a bit difficult to balance, both physically and mentally speaking, but it felt good and right, even as they pulled away, both of them letting the feeling linger.

“I mean, scientifically speaking, that wasn’t bad.”

“Carlos, you _dork._ ” They both laughed again, wild and unbound by anything either of them felt, raucous and alone in the cradling arms of the Joshua tree. It was the end of the world, in a few ways. They were both aware that it was the end of the physical boundaries of Night Vale, that they were at the edge of town where the scrublands began, but neither of them could really have known what kind of danger was lurking inside of a community radio station. And neither of them looked up to see a dark planet of awesome size, lit by no sun, a looming reminder to the impermanence of happiness.

But none of that mattered. Happiness wasn’t permanent, and they knew this, but they still reveled in knowing that nobody could touch them at the end of the world except each other, and this was the way that they had known things were meant to be: laughing, laughing, laughing, like nothing else mattered because nothing else did.

**Author's Note:**

> some notes:
> 
> 1\. the title is a sufjan stevens song. it's gay. i recommend it
> 
> 2\. this is kinda-sorta a request fill for my buddy anne, the prompt being "dark".
> 
> 3\. i wrote a lot of this at a waffle house.
> 
> 4\. this doesn't fit into canon at all. it's just gay goofy teens being teens. also, i'd need a recording of ghost stories to do a good teenage cecil fic, cough cough make it happen fink
> 
> 5\. this is roughly set in...mid-eighties? time isn't real.


End file.
